


Rookie Blues

by Winchester_Werewolf



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: Adulting, Bad Spanish, Biracial Character, Bisexual Steve Rogers, Black Character(s), ChickLit, Cold War, Dating misadventures, Disabled Character of Color, Healthy Relationships, Hispanic Character, Mentions of Child Murder, Military, Multi, Murder Mystery, New Adult, POV Outsider, Past Relationship(s), Police, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Racism, Relationship(s), Revenge, Romance, Sam Wilson is a Saint, Slurs, Veterans, Vignette, area mom tries her best
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-02
Updated: 2016-10-08
Packaged: 2018-08-19 05:10:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8191444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Winchester_Werewolf/pseuds/Winchester_Werewolf
Summary: “But you’re saying it’s a Soviet bullet?”Lina Batiste is a bright, young twenty-something trying to hit the ground running with her second career. She's a mom, a wounded veteran, and single (even those closest to her don't like it). But a Purple Heart can’t solve the string of strange murders occurring around D.C., all imitating Cold War assassinations. Is it the work of a copycat, or of the elusive Winter Soldier?





	1. Coffee Stains & Daiquiris

“Lina, you’ve gotta get out.” 

 

My mug of break-room coffee was halfway to my mouth when Adriana spoke, and I spat it out across the photocopied paperwork I’d been working on for the past half-hour. 

 

My eyes watered by the time the coffee had settled into the bottom of my lungs. “W-what?” I coughed, clawing blindly through my top drawer for a  _ Kleenex _ . 

 

Adriana, a lion-eyed beat cop with more courage than decency, gave me a single sarcastic look. The corner of her lips twitched. 

 

“Get out,  _ y’know _ ,” she said, sounding like we were still twelve. “Find a boyfriend.” 

 

The  _ Kleenex  _ didn’t do a good job of blotting up spilled coffee. The state seal was blotchy and run, and I already knew Marcuse was going to chew me out for wasting printer ink because youmight as well get a whole new machine ink was so goddamn expensive. I sponged at it moodily, trying not to let my anger fumigate the office. 

 

“I don’t see how it matters.” I answered grumpily. 

 

“You’re human, ain’t you?” Adriana shot back, leaning over my cubicle divider with her lunchbox in her hands. “When was the last time you had a date?” 

 

Truth was, I couldn’t remember. When I wracked my brains I could only pull up a disastrous blind date months ago, where the food had arrived cold and the guy had spent the whole dinner talking about work. He’d worn jeans and a polo shirt to an Italian restaurant with a maître d' and tablecloths. We split the bill, he got custard in his stubble and we’d parted ways to never call each other back.    
  
I sighed. “Dating isn’t a priority for me, Ana. I’ve got so much  _ stuff _ .”

 

“Stuff? What  _ ‘stuff _ ’? You’ve got a stable job, nice apartment, two weeks free a month”— she aimed her lunchbox at my head when my mouth popped open— “you’re practically  _ bait _ .” 

 

“What the fuck, Cruize? Bait? What am I supposed to be dating, bears?”

 

She shrugged. “Well, as long as you ain’t hurting anybody—”

 

I grabbed the handle of my coffee mug, and took one mediated sip of what remained. It tasted like hazelnut creamer and grit. “I hate you,” I said levelly. “This is stupid, c’mon, I’m busy.”

  
“Busy? Tell me, what’re your plans for tonight?”

 

I took another sip. “Uh… stop by  _ Trader Joe’s _ . Pay my electricity bill—”

 

“Not your errands list, Lina. Your  _ plans, ay dios mio _ .”    
  
I went silent. Did a chili lime chicken burger and Vanilla Coke with  _ Netflix  _ count as plans? Adriana was probably right. 

 

“ _ Ninguna _ .” I admitted. 

 

“We’re going out tomorrow night.” Adriana decided triumphantly. She cocked her head to the side, showcasing her french braid bun and a shit-eating grin. “Me, you, cocktails, cute guys—” She clicked her tongue and bobbed her head. 

 

I rolled my eyes. We had gone to the Academy together, and hit the town enough during those days for me to have black spots from Ariana’s Long Island Ice Tea habit. When was the last time I  _ had  _ gone out? 

 

Tyler and Jasmine’s birthday dinner at some fancy venue in New Jersey which served canapes and white wine that tasted like pickled ass.  I’d ended up huddled by the open bar until getting poured into a cab by one of Tyler’s aunts. Seven months ago. Counting  _ that  _ as a night out was just too sad, even for me.

 

“C’mon, Lina,” Adriana’s voice was kinder then, and warm. “Ever since I’ve known you haven’t had a single relationship, _conejito_. Y’know, we gotta change that.”

 

I clenched the soggy  _ Kleenex  _ in my hands. Truth was, I wasn’t sure I was  _ capable  _ of a relationship. 

 

* * *

 

Later that night, curled up on my couch in my fluffy blue blanket with a pint of  _ Häagen-Dazs _ and watching TV, I realised how… empty everything was. 

 

My apartment was small, cosy at a stretch, with  _ Craigslist  _ carpets spread across wooden floors and an occasional tchotchke on a spare surface. As hard as I tried and thumbed through  _ Pinterest  _ on my phone, being house proud and decorative wasn’t one of my new civvie traits. My theory was that girls developed those traits in college, competitively decorating their dorm rooms, but I’d been too knee-deep in Fort Sam Houston muck to get them. 

 

Alyssia’s baby photos were on my mantle piece, next to her elementary school portraits and photos of Tyler’s family.  They were something I could be proud of, even if I didn’t own a vase or a throw pillow. 

 

I sucked a mouthful of gooey chocolate cream into my mouth, eyes drifting away from Doctor Christina Yang chopping people up on TV. 

 

My fridge was covered in alphabet magnets, bills, and Alyssia’s drawings. No party invites or mysterious phone numbers. No reminders or shopping lists. It looked like a grim mural to my kid in the dark. Like the ones which appeared outside the station when murdered kids were found, a homage to a corpse in our morgue.

 

Another spoonful of ice-cream followed. It slid like an iceberg down my throat. 

 

I wasn’t used to  _ moping _ . But my eyes suddenly stung and my chest began to ache. 

 

No, nuh-huh. I did not have time for this. Moping was for… people who had  _ time _ . I was a busy go-getter, sitting on my ass eating ice-cream and watching  _ Grey’s Anatomy _ was totally not a Productive Thing to do. When was the last time I had gone to the gym? 

 

TV off, blanket tossed aside, remaining puddle of  _ Häagen-Dazs _ in the freezer, I was still pulling up my leggings when I stumbled out the door at eleven o’clock. 

 

My apartment was in a once-decrepit nineteen-hundred walk-up, the kind with original flooring and staircases thick enough to support the fattest of suit-wearing Americans. It was in a nice part of town — nicer than any other hole I’d previously lived in — but its niceness was overruled by its creaky authenticity. 

 

The doors were too small for their frames, likely modern ones fitted when the building was converted into apartments. Light shone through the gaps in the framing, along with TV chatter and cooking smells, bathing the landing corridors in an otherwise pleasant golden glow.   

 

But at eleven at night, I didn’t expect any secondhand light in the corridor— until there was. 

 

Light was shining beneath the door of apartment 21.  

 

Far as I knew, a recluse lived in 21. Being a baby cop, I worked weird hours, pulling night shifts during weeks where I wasn’t being an 8 til 3 mommy. Having a female Captain with her own kids helped in that respect— but even when I was on my nocturnal off-week, apartment 21 always kept their door closed. 

 

There was a tense two weeks where I thought I needed to flash my badge and break the door down, expecting to find a dead body. Mail had been collecting in a pile outside their door, and pizza vouchers stuck out of the door jams had began to rustle with hallway draft. Then, one morning, all of it had disappeared so I’d stopped worrying.

 

It wasn’t any skin off my nose: bodies left to get ripe were the nastiest to find. Seeing light coming from 21 was a relief. At least there was somebody in this apartment complex with a life. 

 

* * *

 

Free Saturday mornings were rare outside of mommy week. I spent a whole ten minutes in the shower, letting the overpriced conditioner properly soak whilst I shaved my legs. I even used a new razor to do my armpits, and used my ‘nice’ body wash. 

 

Once I emerged from the bathroom, hair wrapped up in Alyssia's butterfly towel — was it bad parenting to use your kid’s things when they weren’t home? I was going to wash it later — and confronted my wardrobe. 

 

I owned lots of sweats. Sweatshirts from my two failed careers, over-sized t-shirts, and lots of unnecessarily lacy and leopard-printed panties. I spent more on pretty underwear than anything else, including socks and work clothes. There were business clothes hanging in my wardrobe for when I did plainclothes office work, polyester pencil skirts and collared blouses that needed to be ironed through dishtowels. 

 

What I didn’t have, however, was any form of clubwear. 

 

The lime-green nightmare I’d worn through my Academy days had been thrown into a dumpster where it belonged, purged during the move. And aside from the regulation black pumps, the only other pair of dressy shoes I had was a pair of aquamarine  _ Jessica Simpson _ platforms. They were alright, I supposed. 

 

Except I had nothing to go with them. 

 

Shit. 

 

Adriana would never forgive me if I wore gym clothes to a club.  _ I _ would never forgive me if I wore gym clothes to a club. I threw myself naked atop my unmade bed to dig beneath my bed to find my phone, tethered to its charger. 

 

My bank account was… suspiciously heavier than normal. Jesus, did that overtime from two months ago finally click over? What had human services mutated into, an efficient system? I bit my tongue as I scrolled through, and transferred some cash to my savings account and towards my rent. 

 

If my maths was correct, I could safely spend eighty dollars. Safely, as in, not starve to death or be unable to get  _ Starbucks  _ on my way to work for the next week. God bless overtime. 

 

I wiggled my ass into some skinnies and a tank while I figured out my plan of attack. There was both a  _ Nordstrom  _ and a  _ Saks  _ outlet a couple of blocks away, plus weird boutique-y places with more flower crowns than taste.  

 

I brewed myself a cup of coffee whilst I swiped through  _ Groupon _ , and poured it into a travel mug when I didn’t find any. Ah, coupon websites. Only useful on days when you  _ didn’t  _ want to go shopping. 

 

Jerri from traffic patrol had sent me a Snap during the night of her posing with a thumbs-up over a totally mangled Jeep Cherokee, its front fender severed from its hood and curved into its obliterated windscreen. I had to admit: I was impressed. Jerri got all the good stuff. 

 

After sending one of me looking squinty eyed with jealousy over my coffee mug, I made sure everything I needed was stuffed in my handbag and I was out. 

 

It was weird being out on earlyish on a Saturday morning. Birds weren’t singing, but there were hungover college kids, stumbling their way home after a night out illegally drinking. I encountered an old couple shuffling down the road with their dog on the way to the bus stop, and had to wipe breakfast taco wrappers off the bench to sit down. Ahh,  _ saturdays _ .

 

Everybody and their ma seemed to be out shopping when I got off the bus near the pavilion. Being out of uniform sucked: nobody made space for me on the sidewalk. What was with mid-thirties suburban moms and their intense love of oversized strollers? They were like fat little plastic tanks on wheels, and the drivers didn’t seem that fussed about ramming me with them.     

 

Shopping was fun in a I-have-money-for-once kind of way. I found a nice dress in  _ Nordstrom _ , which didn’t cling too terribly to my greyhound hips and flattered my not-there chest, and was a nice peachy beige color to go with the shoes. 

 

I was stealing wifi from outside a Starbucks when my phone pinged with a text. 

 

#####  Lyssie misses u xx 

 

It was from Jasmine. The beautiful, established, civil servant girlfriend of my baby-daddy who drove a Porsche and went to church every Sunday. 

 

Don’t get me wrong, I liked Jasmine. She was everything Tyler needed in a girl and more, and she was a good role black role model for my daughter. But the Green Monster in me  _ loathed  _ her.

 

She was perfect. Like Perfect with a capital ‘P’. Smart and funny, with an Ivy League college degree that landed her some cushy civil servant job. One of Tyler’s aunts mentioned that she was PR or whatever but I couldn’t remember. Whenever Jasmine was brought up in Hollie family conversation my mind went suspiciously blank.

 

If Jasmine Hayes ended up in the West Wing nobody would blink.  _ Dios mio _ , the girl was made for it. She made  _ jeans  _ look fancy. 

 

And I resented her a little itty-bitty bit. 

 

Alyssia adored her. People thought she was Jasmine’s daughter all the time, and a deep bitter part of me was terrified it would become true. 

 

But it wasn’t: Pretty Perfect Jasmine hadn’t been dumb enough to get knocked up fifteen. There was no way on earth Alyssia was anybody’s baby but mine. 

 

#####  Mommy misses Lyssie lots too xox can’t wait to see her friday!!

 

Yeah. Suck on  _ that  _ Jasmine. 

 

There hadn’t been a more petty person on the planet. I was an officer of the law for Jesus’s sake. Adriana was right. I had to get out if I had resorted to slinging ‘mommy’ stuff at Tyler’s girlfriend, who was probably a long, long way-away from even considering having babies of her own. 

 

* * *

 

“So, what d’you do, eh?” Douchebag Number Nine slurred at me, leaning over one of the club’s formica tables. The unbuttoned collar of his shirt trailed in the puddles leftover from long-drunk old drinks.

 

My banana daiquiri tasted like  _ Nesquik  _ and coconut liqueur, and I chugged it desperately to numb the pain. 

 

“I’m a police officer.” My voice barely made it over the throbbing of club’s sound system. 

 

“What?” He mouthed at me, leaning forward in a way that might have been flirty when he was five years younger. He wasn’t my type. Feathered mohawk, studded denim jeans, fuzzy body hair. But I’d had just enough booze in my system to not worry too much.

 

“Po-lice Of-fi-cer!”

 

“What?”

 

“I’M A COP!” 

 

He pulled a face at me, his hair lip scrunching up toward his nose. Fantastic. Every dude in a ten mile radius got fresh when I dropped the ‘C’ bomb, like I was going to arrest them for existing. 

 

Douchebag had come up to me near the bar whilst I was waiting for the tender to blend my daiquiri together, and then asked me back to his table. Without offering to pay for my drink. Which was fine, I was a modern woman, I could pay for my own stuff — but Douchebag kept making swipes at my ass under the table. That pretty much warranted a free drink, dammit.

 

And now he wouldn’t, because I was a  _ cop _ . 

 

Men could be dumb. Me being a cop threatened them somehow. My femininity in a male profession emasculated them and creeped them out, like I would treat them like men normally treated women. Like they wouldn’t get to Wear the Pants or whatever misogynistic bullshit warped their idea of what women should be. 

 

It was exactly like being on mandated Army fun sessions. This sucked. If you shoved the sucker into a beige-green set of ACUs he would have fitted into my nightmares. 

 

There was an upside: when I walked away, he didn’t yell at me.  _ Score _ . 

 

Too many people were dancing on the floor for me to scan the crowd for Adriana. The overhead purple and green party lights bleached everyone’s hair the same sort of grape Kool-Aid color. 

 

I checked my watch and took one last gulp of daiquiri. I wanted to go home. After three clubs and one “social” lounge, tonight hadn’t been good. Though Adriana had shoved me toward enough guys, none had given me their numbers. Or bought me drinks. Or seemed interested in making conversation that didn’t revolve around getting an Uber or how nice their apartments were.

 

Adriana had met up with friends in the last club we were in, some cholas she had been friends with since community college. None of them were interested in talking to me, and I them. They were catty and loud, and made me buy them drinks. But as much as I hated her friends, I couldn’t leave Adriana alone without a ride. 

  
I made my back to the bar, praying the tender had enough salt in the dip-trays to keep me in margaritas for the rest of the night.


	2. 10-35, 10-35

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW: grisly gore scene, mentions of nazis and swastikas

On Monday, I found myself crammed in the front seat of another officer’s cruiser. Technically, even though I’d been at MPD for over a year, I was still a rookie. Which meant I needed a supervisor.

Officer Draper wasn’t a bad supervisor. He was in his thirties, with a wife and two kids and all that other goopy stuff, and screamed of such generic American mayonnaise-ness I wondered if he’d been spat out of a had-been frat boy factory thirty-six years ago.

Riding with Draper usually involved two things: buying him over-priced double-shot coffees and finding ways to ignore the _big_ codeword callings over the radio. Monday was one of those days.

“I mean,” Draper said through a mouthful of bearclaw. “It’s not that I don’t think Werth is a bad outfielder, just that I think as a professional guy, he should, y’know— shave a li’l.”

I knew jack and shit about baseball. I just hummed and sipped my latte, jiggling my phone on my knee whilst we sat, scoping a run-down dump for some drug dealer who’d missed his court appearance. Big surprise: the dude being charged for possession of ten thousand dollars’ worth of crack hadn’t appeared in court. I didn’t know why they didn’t have a mandatory holding period for people who got slam-dunked for carrying around enough bricks of coke to build a crackhouse until their court hearing. Cutting them loose seemed like the stupidest of ideas.

It wasn’t that way in Afghanistan. Anyone suspected of making IEDs was quarantined until we searched their stuff and shoved them in front of some brass for interrogation. But I guess you couldn’t equate the Taliban with drug dealers. Even if both of them didn’t do a lot for the betterment of others.   
  
And drug dealers didn’t gun down UNICEF workers trying to vaccinate women and kids against polio and smallpox.

“It’s like each time he appears on field, he looks like a caveman!” Draper continued seriously, oblivious to my glazed-over expression. I could see it myself in the wing mirror, but Draper was a man on a baseball-chatting mission. “I mean, Batiste, d’you — y’know, as a lady — think a beardy caveman’s attractive?”

I took a contemplative sip of latte. “Depends on the beard,” I said. “Caveman? Nah. But like, lumberjacks are the shit man. Farmer’s market hot.”

“‘Farmer’s market hot’?”

Huh, I’d forgotten Draper wasn’t the type to do school runs in the morning. He probably wasn’t in the _know_ for schoolyard mom talk. I cleared my throat thoroughly before explaining, “farmer’s market hot, like, you know how you see those guys in Downtown that look homeless but wear _Abercrombie & Fitch_ and shit?”

Draper nodded diligently.

“They’re farmer’s market hot. They’re rugged lumberjack looking dudes who sell you home-smoked bacon and handmade soaps at the same time” — I clicked my tongue and made finger-pistols at the dashboard — “every suburban chick’s dream.”

“Suburban?” Draper laughed. “Didn’t you grow up in Potomac Gardens?”

“ _Shuttup_ —”

A crescendo of loud beeps popped out of the dashboard radio.

“10-35, 10-35, requesting all officers to secure area 1847 Hobart Street North-West.” The dispatcher sounded familiar and Draper let out a groan under his breath. We were in Adams Morgan, not that far from location. “10-35, 1847 Hobart Street North-West,” it repeated, and another melody of robotic beeps followed to end the transmission. Background cop chatter from across town filled the airspace again once the message cut off.

A major crime in Mount Pleasant? That was weird. Rich neighborhoods near the Smithsonian Park mostly got break and entries or ‘suspicious persons’. Major crime was murder or terrorism or something.   
  
Draper took a whole chunk of bear claw into his mouth before jabbing the radio with a finger. “10-15, patrol 357 en route,” he said into the receiver.

When Draper turned the engine on, he did a big drama-queen U-turn on the empty street and gunned down Columbia road.

“Here I was thinking we were gonna get Giorgi today but _oh_ _no_ ,” Draper whined. “Gotta deal with a dead body.”

“Dead body?” I asked. “10-35 means dead body?”

Draper snorted. “No, but it usually ends up bein’ a dead body.”

Three cruisers were already on Hobart Street when we got there, lights flashing. Mount Pleasant was a typical D.C. fake-colonial area, shadowed by lush green trees, wooden houses, and narrow streets. A forensics truck was already jammed into the narrow driveway of a white two-story. Senior officers were clustered on the front porch, hands on radios. Shit must have been going down. One of the officers saw Draper when we got out of the cruiser and slammed our doors, waving him over with his whole arm.

“Go have fun,” Draper instructed me and waved one hairy arm at two sets of blues down the street. Kelsey and Brent — fellow rookies from my Academy class — were stretching yellow tape around sign posts, throwing them at one another like they were papering a tree. Baby cops played with baby cops. I did as I was told — though I wanted in the goddamn murder house.

“Wassup officer Batiste bay-bay?” Brent jokingly crowed when I walked up, his normal spiky hairdo gelled down. _Dios mio_ , he almost looked _respectable_. Now he was going to actually get girlfriends now he looked nice enough to bring home.

Kelsey was intently staring at a bracket on a pole, looping the tape carefully so it stayed secure. Poor Kelsey was unusually optimistic for a cop, and diligent to the point of obsessive. People liked to tap and smack the tape lines once they were up: they would fall right down if you didn’t tie them down tight enough. Civilians could be little turds. I didn't know why she bothered.

“What’s going on?” I asked, jabbing a thumb over my shoulder.

Brent smirked and pointed at one of the cruisers closest to the house, parallel parked in front of the porch steps. A woman in a cream blouse stood huddled up against a large brick letterbox, wiping at her eyes whilst being comforted by Officer Viola, my first supervisor cop. She was lovely, and the witness looked a wreck. I was glad Viola was with her.

“ _Mur-hur-dur_!” Brent intoned creepily, making spooky claw-fingers. Kelsey rolled her eyes.

“Seriously, dude? You’re like twenty-three.”

“And yet here I am, an officer of the law! _Pa-chow!_ ” He karate-chopped Kelsey’s tape-line and it rustled, bobbing up and down across the street, ruining its tension.

“Ohmygod.” Kelsey groaned. “I’m going to have to re-do that, y’know, Officer Jerome is such a tight-ass.”

“You know who else has a tight ass?”

“BRENT!” Kelsey shrieked and slapped his arm with her tape roll. I had a feeling I was missing something but I was more interested in the murder house than whatever shit was going down between them.

“House? Murder?” I prompted.

“Okay so like, _Ally McBeal_ over there came home and found her husband’s mush all over their living room— oh no, wait, I’m sorry,” Brent cleared his throat suddenly and then, in a high-pitched mocking voice squealed, “the ‘ _recep-shi-on roo-hm_ ’.”

Kelsey snorted sarcastically. “Uncanny. Really.”

“Forensics says the dude’s been dead two hours.” Brent continued seriously, throwing his roll of tape from one palm to the other. “And get this, right. Get this!”  
  
He leaned forward until he was almost face to face with me. His brown eyes stared intensely into mine. “Guess who the neighbours say dunnit?”

“Who?” I breathed. I loved Brent’s random shit. He had made Academy bearable by messing with everything.

“The _Winner Soljerrr_!”

My face dropped and my jaw turtled back into my neck. “ _Bullshit_.”

“I know right?” Kelsey cut in before Brent could look to offended. “It’s like every other day somebody sees the Winter Soldier running ‘round. Ghost stories are so lame.”

“The Winter Soldier isn’t lame! He’s a soviet assassin that moves through the shadows, ready to kill capitalist scum.”

Kelsey rounded on Brent with a smile on her face. “If he was real, how come nobody’s seen him in thirty years, huh Brent? _Huh_?”

“Because he’s an assassin, _duh_.”

“Face it, he’s not real.”

“Aliens are real. Ironman’s real. Captain America was defrosted a couple years ago!” Brent argued hotly, standing up straight and putting his hands on his waist. “You can’t tell me the Winter Soldier isn’t real!”

The sad thing was, I had a feeling I would be having this conversation with my _twelve-year-old_ in the future. Alyssia was a Santa Claus and Easter Bunny super-fan. It was not a conversation I was looking forward to. Especially when there were so many goddamn counter-arguments as to why they couldn’t _not_ exist.

Brent and Kelsey were still continuing their debate when I retreated. I wasn’t going to lie, I was excited; I didn’t want to be in blues forever. Homicide was the best department to crawl into, so digging around a murder crime scene seemed like a good way to get noticed.

Officer Viola was helping the witness into the front seat of her cruiser when my boot hit the kerb. “Batiste? It’s grizzly in there, honey,” she said sombrely. The witness— widow?— let out a choked sob as her butt hit leather. Viola turned away from me to comfort her, trying to slap a bandaid on her fuck-up.

I shrugged. I didn’t doubt my old mentor, but I didn’t need babying. Especially when it came to dead bodies.

Detectives Festinger and Su were talking seriously when I clomped my way up the porch. They had fancy leather notebooks out and were writing in them with heavy metal pens that cost more than a mortgage repayment. Neither of them looked at me, the schmucks.

The fly screen and front door were wide open, and I wiped my boots before making my way inside. The entry opened to a large open-plan living room. What was probably a color-scheme of taupe-and-cream was flecked with red.

Around the white-suited Forensics teams and and other blue-suited cops, a crumpled form in chinos and a button-up lay sprawled across the floor. A toppled beige armchair bracket the corpse’s butt like a tortoise shell.

Chunks of skull and pink mush were spread on the carpet, a pool of blood around what remained. The matching sofa suite was spattered in brown-red blood, and a large bit of forehead hung off the lip, strands of grey-hair slicked down with gel.

The shooter must have came in through the kitchen: Forensics was crawling over the empty entryway, dusting for prints. The victim must have been sitting down watching morning television when he was shot. The TV was still on, though somebody had put it on mute. Christine Everhart’s helmet-haired head stared out with plastic smile at Forensics cameras which flashed and clicked around the room.

I walked around the perimetre, avoiding the forensics guys.

A medium-range shot to the back of the head with a handgun. It had to have been a handgun; the other executions I’d seen had all been with AKs and larger rifles, and yeah, sure, the crime scene was gross. But there was nothing more gory than a headshot with a thirty-nine millimeter bullet. This was a tickle in comparison.

“Batiste, what’re you doing here? I thought I told you to wait outside.” Draper’s voice cut through my analysis, and I looked toward it to see my supervisor tear himself away from the suit beside him. He looked… concerned.

I shrugged and gave an easy smile, even though the smell of greymatter and curdling blood was stomach-churning in the midday warmth. “Officer Forrest says the suspect is the Winter Soldier,” I said as way of explanation.

Draper adopted the same aneurysm-type look every senior officer got whenever Brent’s name was mentioned. “The wife’s not a reliable witness right now. I’d be too if I found my wife like this.”

Unreliable witness meant unreliable account meant nobody could search for a suspect. That _sucked_. It left cops to do deal with the crime scene and hope something turned up.

“So who’s he?” I asked and jabbed my chin towards Corpsy McCorpseface. Who… technically couldn’t be a McCorpseface when half of his face was all over his living room.

Draper reached out and put a hand on my shoulder and swayed me to get me to turn my head away. “You okay with this?”

“Seen worse.” I shrugged.

He looked confused for a moment and then realisation dawned on his face. “‘Stan?”

“Yeah,” I said with a strained grin that fell off my face faster than it appeared. I cleared my throat. “So, name?”

“Uh… Geoffrey Ealing, civil servant. Had a day off for a dentist appointment.”

“Anything stolen?”

Draper’s eyes widened and he gave a solid shake of his head. “Nope. Wallet, keys, Rolex, everything is on the kitchen counter. The shooter came in that way but didn’t take nothing.”

So, not a robbery then. Most robberies in well-to-do neighborhoods happened during daylight hours when residents were working.

“Any idea of the motive?”

Draper gave another exaggerated shrug. “Nothing,” he said irritably. “Too early to tell, anyway. Nothing stolen, no police record, his wife says he hasn’t been acting differently.”

I clicked my tongue and rolled my weight onto the other foot. A glance over my shoulder told me that Civil Servant Geoffrey was still very much murdered. Civil servant. Why kill and not rob a civil servant?

The house must have been almost a million bucks this close to Capitol Hill. A next generation PlayStation was under the television, easily ripped out and hocked at the nearest Pawn Dealer. And a Rolex left unmolested in the kitchen?

“Political motive?”  
  
“‘ _Political_ ’?” Draper repeated sarcastically. “You do know what a civil servant _is_ , don’t you?”

I scrunched my eyes up tight. “ _Triskelion_ ring any bells?” I bit out. “Could he have, y’know, been a —”

“Do _not_ tell me you’re _believing_ the _unreliable_ witness’s _unreliable_ testimony, Batiste,” Draper’s angry voice cut through and I opened my eyes to blink rapidly at his pissed tone. “Do you _see_ any swastikas or skulls in here?”

Maybe it was because he was middle-class and white that Draper never questioned anything. Not his fashion choices, how he took his coffee, and certainly not authority. He had no reason to. And when a federal organisation was internet-ousted to be a front for neo-nazis, the only people who worried were people not like Draper.

Hatred wasn’t always as obvious as swastikas and red skulls. Sometimes they were cream carpets and blood-stained sofas.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah gotta love a grisly murder amirite? 
> 
> The baseballer Draper is referring to is Jason Werth, who plays for the Washington Nationals and has rather magnificent facial hair. 
> 
> 10-35 is the code for "major crime" in the District of Columbia, I couldn't find the one for "suspicious death".

**Author's Note:**

> The OC cop AU nobody asked for. No affiliation with the television show "Rookie Blue". I had no idea it was a telly program until I googled the title, but it had been the working title so long I couldn't bear to change it.
> 
> I'll add a reference list to this with chapter 2 in the comments, because I have a lot of it aha. 
> 
> Will be updated weekly (hopefully), and may be patchy from now until after the 16th of November 2016 (due to exams). I have 4 chapters written.
> 
> I researched as much as I could. All squadrons and military commentary is as accurate as I could make it from an outsider's perspective who lives across the Pacific ocean. If one thing I mentioned is honky, please point it out to me. All police numeric codes are (internet) accurate for the District of Columbia. Unless otherwise stated, all things mentioned are referenced including food, Americanisations, Military slang, and types of bubble bath available in the Continental US (because I'm pernickety like that). All of my Spanish is Google Translate Spanish mixed with rudimentary understanding of Italian (they're similar enough I can make assumptions), but any native Spanish speakers, pleaseee correct me.


End file.
